Posted on

Papers, please

I applied for a passport for the first time in mid-October of this year. I was sure that I had waited too long, that I would get one of these damnable passports with the RFID chips in them, and that my next purchase was sure to be an RFID zapper. But it arrived last week, and to my surprise, it lacked the magic you’ve-been-screwed symbol. It’s still not too late to get a non-chipped one! I believe it’s basically luck of the draw at this point, but for what it’s worth, I bought mine at the post office and got the non-expedited variety.

Whew, 10 years until I have to get tagged. I’ll wait in the long line as long as they will let me, thank you very much.

What’s wrong with RFID passports?
How can I tell if my passport has an RFID chip?

Posted on

Don’t panic


Don’t panic
Originally uploaded by bluesterror.

Ever since buying my Accord a couple of years ago, I’ve been an enthusiastic frequent user of the keyless entry, as well as an unenthusiastic occasional user of its far-too-easily-activated panic mode. Whenever I sit on my keys, press on the pocket where my key fob resides, or hold it just so (usually when I’m carrying in groceries at 11pm on my quiet residential street), my car’s horn starts blaring, lights flash, and I have to run to my car hitting the unlock button until it shuts up. Yesterday, I triggered it twice, so I finally decided to do something about it. So I did some surgery: I took a box knife to the traces on its PCB and after thirty minutes (made longer because I screwed up and had to fix a mistake) I now have a fully un-functioning panic button on this thing.

I hope I never need it.

Posted on

Gauged Encounter

I think I voted today.

Ange and I fulfilled our pre-Cana responsibilities in one fell swoop last week
by attending a weekend retreat. As in, you must retreat from your senses to
endure the silliness of the whole affair. The weekend was set up as a nonstop
series of lectures by a parade of snippy, passive-aggressive Catholic couples
(examples for us all), followed by sessions in which we betrothed would answer
discussion questions and then privately compare notes on the matter. The first
two or three were actually pretty good, touching on our past together, how we
planned to handle various aspects of married life and our plans for the future.
I’m happy to say Ange & I know each other well enough that we generally wrote the same things to each other. Then it got repetitive, and at turns disturbing, at which point we began writing essays with the sole aim of making the other laugh.

Here are some excerpts:

Q. How will our differences complement each other?


A. It helps that you are a genetic male XY and I am a genetic female XX.

On theology:


Open our hearts to God => God is a heart surgeon => God has God complex

On sexuality in marriage, after the 60-year-old couple described their lovemaking-eww-eww-eww-ness:


Tips for keeping the flame alive:

  • Movie fantasy
  • "Special" foot rubs
  • Hide X-rated greeting cards around the house
  • Conflate sex with religion
  • Dungeon

On our future family:


Reasons for having children:

  • Organ source
  • DNA propagation
  • Christmas gifts
  • Kid's menus
  • Geriatric caregivers

And then there were lots of snarky comments about Natural Family Planning, too. Despite our lack of reverence we graduated anyway, and all in all it wasn’t too bad, but I am so glad that’s over with.